Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

LF Grandstand Roof Progress

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The first rendered image in an awful long time, to see how the LF section is looking. In the process of building the truss work all around, but I have the LF truss placeholder up now, and some slightly more advanced seating elements.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

22,000 Seats



Added 8,000 or so Loge seats, located the main posts for the entire seating bowl and redid the obstruction center lines, then removed any obstructing seats. I'm preppping the next task, which is building the 6, count 'em 6 different roof truss setups used in the park.

There's the left field grandstand setup from post-1934, the section 27 which is shifted a row down from the normal 3rd base grandstand due to it bridging the angles to LF, the main 3rd base truss, the modified home plate truss with deeper back supports, the first base line with rear posts around row 15, and the RF line stretching around the corner. I'm sure there'll be more, including the possibility of a different section 31 truss because of a strangely placed seat.

I updated my picasaweb account with pictures I took on Friday's rainout, and the gorgeous restarted game on Sunday. Most pictures deal with posts as that's what I was working on, but there's also a bit of Fenway weirdness I captured as well in section 14:



I don't think $50 goes as far as it used to. At Fenway, caveat emptor.

Monday, September 14, 2009

14,627 Seats





Give or take a few, just sat 14,627 grandstand seats into Virtual Fenway. After spending weeks trying to get an accurate idea of where to place the roof supports in relation to the seating bowl, it finally dawned on me that I should probably know where the seats are in the first place.

This, of course, raised a few more issues with seating placement. Problem one is in section 19 and 20 behind the plate, where the spacing doesn't quite work out the way I would like. Problem 2 is with section 11 in RF, where the post-1946 (I guess? Still trying to figure out the date) expansion of seating over Canvas Alley would leave 3' of extra space somehow. Problem 3 is with the first row of Grandstand 33 over by the monster. And Problem 4, figuring out what the grandstand was like before that weird GS 12 portal was covered.

But progress is progress. Next we're onto the Loge seats, which look substantially different than how they do today, when there were fewer aisles.

Friday, September 4, 2009

A Mystery

Updated post is below, but I'm searching for help on a part of Fenway I simply cannot figure out, and I would love to find some photos showing this actually existing. From the blueprints:

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The portals down to the concourse are roughly highlighted in red, but there is one real outlier circled in yellow. There doesn't appear to be any concourse even near this part of the park, and I haven't been able to find any photos showing this even existing, however it has appeared in two different 1934 renovation blueprints.

Now, this could stem from a number of different situations. One, it was part of the 1934 renovations that simply weren't built, and just appeared on blueprints before being nixed. Second, this portal was part of the original 1912 park, but was filled in in 1934. Thirdly, it actually existed, and was filled in much later, in time with another renovation.

Option #3 would be the most interesting due to the new questions raised. Where did it go? When was it filled in? Are there concourses buried deep in the park that haven't been seen, or converted into storage?

Any photos, anecdotal evidence, and the like is deeply appreciated. Until I figure out what's going on, it's staying out of Vectorworks.

Sloooow going


These are rough locations of the infamous Fenway Park poles, along with their equally infamous sightline obstructions. I'm using photos of Fenway combined with the excellent Fenway Pole Finder book to determine exactly where you're getting screwed when you buy a ticket.

Once this is finalized, I try to make sense of the roof truss placement, and then the even more tedious job of building the horizontal and diagonal connections between the truss. We've firmly entered "this isn't fun" territory, but I'd hate to end up with a recreation of Fenway that can't even get the obstructions correct.

The marginally confounding issue with the truss placement deals with the roof being so heavily changed over the years. In the 80s when the roof boxes / press box / everything else were modified, virtually everything in front of the posts was rebuilt. And so we went from:


(thank you Ballparks, Stadiums and Arenas)

to:



So, they lopped everything off and dramatically shortened the roof in front of the post, so the people in the upper deck would have a chance to see anything within 50' of the stands all the way around. The renovation did have the added benefit of making Fenway look far less like an ancient double-A park, as you can see in any old photos of the roofline.

The best indicator of the difference in roof pitch is down the RF corner, where they never bothered to modify the roofline (at least, not since '34):



It was a pretty dramatic difference. So, when it comes time to move onto the current-day model of Fenway, there will be a fair bit of rebuilding to do. Until then, 1934 continues.
 
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